U.S. Military Turns to ‘Vader’ to Hunt Rebel Scum in Afghanistan

For years, the U.S. military employed Ground Moving Target Indicator technology to track potentially hostile vehicles on the ground. Now, the U.S. military is working on a new sensor — customized for service in Afghanistan — that can spot individuals at a distance and track them on a digital map.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the head of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, said the new sensor package, called Vader (“Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar“), was particularly well suited for the war in Afghanistan. The bombs are relatively crude there, and the bomb-planters place the explosives far from the roads.

“Ground movement indicators were very valuable in Iraq … But the enemy kind of rode to work in Iraq,” he said. “The enemy walks to work in Afghanistan. So we are developing a sensor that can see dismounts – and therefore can cue other sensors to those dismounts.”

The project — which would equip a drone or plane with a Synthetic Aperture Radar — originated with the Pentagon’s far-out research arm, Darpa. The initial idea was that a Vader-equipped aircraft could monitor a road, track a vehicle to a stop, observe dismount motion near the vehicle, characterize certain motions (like someone carrying a heavy load), and measure a ground disturbance after the vehicle. Dial the sensitivity up, and the same thing could work for tracking individuals, too.

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman recently finished up the first test flight of the new sensor. Next step: Find a new acronym. Does the American military really want to identify themselves with the Galactic Empire? What’s next, shouting “you rebel scum” at the Taliban?